Title: bone vibration
Summary: "We aren't your way to redemption." DracoLuna
Author's Note: Yet another story that has underwent so many revisions. Agh.
/
after.
Her name is Nova, and he can't help but thank her for it.
"She's beautiful," he says.
"Well, she is half of you," she says quietly.
He brushes the baby's cheek with faint admiration in his eyes before quickly retracting his hand and clearing his throat.
"I suppose I should leave," he says awkwardly.
She nods, but he has a feeling that she is thinking of someone else – the little girl in her arms. His eyes sting.
As he leaves, Nova starts to cry.
"Don't worry, little love. I'll never leave you," Luna whispers to her. "We'll always be together."
Draco fights the impulse to stay. He leaves them in the hospital room and does not allow himself to cry.
When he returns home, his wife looks at him with worry. "What's wrong, darling?"
Draco looks at her and tries to be calm, "Nothing, Astoria. Nothing's wrong."
/
then.
He fucks Luna for the first time on a Wednesday afternoon. He sees her on the street, hair still the color of pale moonlight and eyes still cloudy and dreamy. They get clear when she sees him.
He doesn't know how it happens, just that it's close to the second anniversary of the Battle and she links her fingers in his and kisses him all over. She wears turnips in her ears and he makes her scream so loud that his bones vibrate.
"Trapped," Luna mutters in his ear, right before he comes. "I feel like that sometimes."
He sticks his fingers in her mouth and they rent the hotel room for two more nights, fucking constantly.
"How did this happen?" he asks her. "How did we get here?"
She gets on her knees for him, "I always knew you liked the unknown."
Something tells him that she plays pretend almost as often as he does.
/
He marries Astoria four months after the second anniversary. They've been together since a few months after the actual Battle, and she tells him she's loved him since she was a First Year.
"Why?" he asks her once, quiet and unlike him.
Her lips quirk, "When you weren't trying to be Draco Malfoy, you used to stare off into space and... I don't know. It seemed like you were you, then."
They make love on one of their wedding presents – silk sheets.
He receives a card the next day from Luna. The envelope has her drawings all over it, and the "o" in his name is barely there. He attempts to open it, wants to so badly he can hardly handle it, but stops himself, for some reason.
/
He opens the letter when she tells him she's pregnant.
She will never be unknown.
He goes to her flat and Luna glows like pregnant women should, and he kisses her like he kisses Astoria.
"Don't try to make me like her," Luna says, eyes cloudy and sad.
She ends up throwing up in her toilet bowl and they make love in her bathtub. He feels the slope of her belly and wonders what the baby's name would be.
"I can't keep her," Luna says when he puts on his clothes. "I can't, Draco. I can't."
He bites his lip, wants to fight her and tell her that's my baby too this is my decision too but he says, "It's a girl?"
Luna's mouth quivers, "Yeah. It's a girl."
/
Astoria tells him one day after months of trying, "I... I can't have a baby, Draco. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."
/
Luna never gets the abortion.
/
Draco starts seeing Luna in his dreams. It's the Hogwarts Luna, the one he doesn't know – not like he knows the Now Luna, either.
You stare at me, sometimes. She smiles, You don't notice it, but you look at me.
He's the one who stole her things.
/
He knows he's not the first person she calls when she starts feeling the contractions.
"She's coming," Luna says into the phone. There is pain on the edges of her words.
Draco starts to breathe so heavily into the receiver that he thinks he might be wind. Luna hangs up and he is left trying to figure out what hospital she is in.
He misses the birth of his child as he goes to hospital to hospital, trying to find Luna.
/
after.
He calls her in the afternoon, three days after Nova is born.
"I want to see you – both of you."
Luna breathes into the phone, and in the background, Draco hears Nova crying.
"Let me help you," Draco finds himself saying. "Let me do good for once."
Luna sighs softly into the telephone and whispers, "We aren't your way to redemption."
Always left with a dial tone.
/
Astoria walks into the kitchen and loops her arms around Draco's neck. He thinks, she's suffocating me. She is smiling into the shell of his ear.
She pulls away to put a pan on the stove and turns around, "Oh, I heard that Lovegood girl had a baby. No one knows who the father is." Astoria turns around and misses the sight of Draco's clenched fists. "It's sad, isn't it – that baby was probably a mistake. We... we don't even get a chance."
Tears fall into the pan and Draco finds himself walking over to Astoria, lifting her up onto the counter and pressing himself against her.
Astoria meets his eyes and he finds that hers are hooded.
"Take responsibility, Draco," she says, fingers gliding on his hairline. "You've got to do it one of these days. It's truly liberating."
He kisses her neck.
/
He leaves the next morning.
/
Luna calls him on a Sunday afternoon.
"I heard you left her," she says, quietly. "Is it true?"
Draco is looking at the divorce papers as he listens to Luna breathe into the telephone.
"True," he says, softly.
He waits for her to respond and looks around his rented flat. He hears the cars on the busy London street, the woman next door making coffee. There is no sound of magic buzzing here.
"It's a start," Luna finally says.
"A good one?"
Draco hears the hint of Luna's old dreamy smile, "A start."
/